Are close friends of the gender you are attracted to okay when you're married?

[PinkFlamingo]

8 hours ago, elaine567 said:

Trust existed here for years, his wife was very trusting, more trusting than most I may say, regarding this "friend".
That is UNTIL the "friend" became single and was then seen as a serious threat to her marriage.
Newly single people can cause havoc in married communities...
Faithful's wife doesn't want her husband to be seen in coffee shops, bars and movie theatres with a single woman, nor does she I guess want him seen visiting her at home. 
It is humiliating for her  to have her husband out entertaining a single woman... She is fighting for her marriage here.
Fine when the "friend" was just " Fred's wife", now the "friend" is no doubt a loose cannon determined to snare herself a lovely man. (I think the "incident" proved this. She was staking her claim on Faithful.)
Faithful knows all this and is determined not to lose his emotional affair partner.

I'm not sure why single people should latch onto married people. What I usually observe is that one can distinguish quite easily between single and married people insofar as single people take more care of themselves since they also have more time for themselves, usually in order to be attractive on the singles market. Maybe to their spouses the husbands and wives may appear awfully attractive and have to be protected against those single people who lust after them, but as a single woman, if someone offered me their husband, I would happily decline.

A husband who is unhappy with his wife? - Yuck, stay way from me with your marital problems, why did you get involved with the wrong woman anyway while I was waiting for the right person?

A husband who is happy with his wife, but still hits on me? - Yuck, what kind of creepy idiot is that? (That's the creeps who will ask you for threesomes)

As I have already said, most husbands are not George Clooney and most women don't care about your husband and are not in love with him. What happens is probably projection from the wive's side. Maybe the husbands get the wrong ideas when they have been married too long to the same woman, but I'm pretty sure that most single women are looking somewhere else and not at the married men.

[Kyra]

On 11/13/2019 at 9:13 AM, Faithful1975 said:

So I am kind of wondering what everyone's thoughts are on this and what "rules" and/or "boundaries" do you think are reasonable. For example, is it okay to meet your friend once a month for coffee or go to an event related to a shared interest your spouse doesn't care about and/or can't attend as long as you are open with everything? Does the duration of the friendship make a difference?

Ideally a married couple should be secure enough for any of that to be fine. In my 20 yr monogamous marriage we never really stated any rules or boundaries. It was taken for granted that sex or making out with someone else was against the 'rules'. Otherwise we never had any issue with each other having friends of opposite gender. If my husband went to dinner with a woman, whether I knew her or not, I wouldn't give it a second thought.
I suppose part of my absolute trust in him is that he is very moral and has high self control and not everyone has that.

[Kyra]

On 11/13/2019 at 11:36 AM, Faithful1975 said:

I have a female friend I have known for about twenty year

Seems to me that if you've been platonic friends this long with no issues of temptation or developing intimate feelings, it's surely unlikely to happen now.

I've never like the idea of people being possessive toward their partner and 'guarding' them against someone who might steal them away. My partner is not my possession. I don't believe in putting limits on your partners' life just in case they "catch feelings". It could just as easily happen with someone you don't/can't guard him against.

I would expect my partner to make his own decisions about how much time he can spend with another woman without getting emotionally or physically involved - to be his own guard. Any thing else is treating him like he can't be trusted and is too immature or stupid to know what is appropriate. 

I would only say something if he was spending so much time away it was impacting on our own relationship and parenting.